Jared Stein – Education, Technology, Culture, and the Internet

While Canvas, the LMS we’re using at UVU, does have easy-to-use grading and assignment features, I’m always interested in new tools and services that pop up. Enter Engrade.com, a free, online toolset that focuses on providing a robust and user-friendly online gradebook (more…)

Knewton has put together a tidy little infographic on Blended Learning (K12) that’s worth examining–even if you’re in higher ed (more…)

I’ve been trying to sort out types of reading processes as types or modes that relate to differing goals. What I’m calling “types” differs from processes, strategies, and styles–but that’s another post. Let me summarize a handful of key identifications and distinctions that have been made in the research literature (more…)

I just had the wacky idea that I could force users in an experimental situation to engage in movements that help track their reading behavior in a web browser. This method would employ Javascript and CSS–in short, the script would obscure text outside of the foveal vision area–the readable foveal vision area would be centered near the cursor, requiring the user to move the cursor with her fixations. Combine this with coordinate-based Javascript mouse tracking and user input that reports to a server via AJAX a la UsaProxy, and you’ve got an interesting, albeit limited, method of tracking eye movements (more…)

I was in diagramming mode this afternoon, thinking through different aspects of the processes and interactions of reading. One sketch led me to the following simple visualization of printed vs. digital media. This draft excludes forms and modes, and may only be useful as a component of my own understanding:

Late last week I spent some energy questioning and answering my current understanding of dual-coding theory and it’s distinction between verbal and non-verbal, vs. visual and non-visual (more…)

Pavio distinguishes between verbal and non-verbal information as a basis for dual-coding theory–an important concept for educators designing and developing learning media. The distinction between these categories is clear to me, but during a class discussion today it seemed I was in the minority (more…)

University of Wisconsin – Extension hosts what I think is a pretty thorough introduction to evaluation logic models, a topic that grabbed my attention when first encountered in the Fitzpatrick, Sanders, and Worthen textbook “Program Evaluation”. In addition to resources and examples, the UWEX site includes a complete lesson module on logic models. Unfortunately the materials are not open licensed.

I’ve written very briefly and meekly shared with a few close colleagues my interest in the role of solitude in learning–especially in context of modern networked communication media–i.e. the web. Recently I’ve begun to consider how metacognitive strategies figure into a view of the learner as a necessarily solitary figure and as a (even occasional) member of a learning community). I read an article this week past weekend that sparked some ideas (more…)

Wikipedia had no article on Benjamin Bloom‘s 2 sigma problem (1984), and virtually no references to the observed phenomena or related studies, so I drafted one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_Sigma_Problem.

It’s little more than a stub right now, but I plan to come back to it, and I trust others–especially those in Jon Mott‘s IP&T 692R course, “The 2 Sigma Problem”–will contribute to and expand the article.